Character etymology for Elementary - Checking Baggage 和

Today we look at a very common and also tricky character 和 hé (and, harmony)

Character: 和

Traditional form:和

Pinyin:hé

Meaning: and,harmony, peace, peaceful, calm

Frequency: 24

Strokes: 8

Decomposition:

禾 hé (grain) + 口 kǒu (mouth)

Radical part:口 kǒu

Alternative forms of radical: none

Radical meaning: mouth

Stroke animation: (the strokes are drawn the direction the picture is tipping)

Etymology:

In early seal script the character looked like this:

The left part, yue, is the name of an ancient musical instrument that indicated the meaning and the right part, he, indicated the sound. The sound of the music is peaceful. The character anyhow quickly evolved so in seal script it where written like this:

This is 禾 hé (grain) + 口 kǒu (mouth) grain is man's staple food and most agreeable to the mouth. Grain agrees with mouth to produce harmony.

I like to remember it like this: mouth AND grain makes my hunger go away and fill me with HARMONY hence the meanings ("and" and "Harmony") are remembered.

和 pronounced as hé and with the meanings "and / together with / with / sum / union / peace / harmony / " is the absolutely most common one but the tricky part is that the character actually do have more meanings and even more pronunciations e.g.: